PrintVis Tip of the Week #31 – Developer Trace Mode

PrintVis Tip of the Week #31: Developer Trace Mode

Senior Developer Mogens Christensen visits us this week with some valuable insider knowledge: A PrintVis performance tool unique to our system (not part of standard NAV) which allows you to see the processing time and quantity of formula calculations.

Formulas 1 through 1000 are standard and optimized for performance.

Custom formulas 1001 and up are built on system formulas, and can include special calculations which may reference other formulas.

Sometimes a User or a Consultant defines a unique formula which references other custom formulas, and inadvertently results in a cascade of calculations that seriously degrades performance.

When we receive a complaint about excessively slow performance on an estimate, examining the statistics of custom formulas in that particular setup has now been made easy by ticking the Developer Trace Mode box in PrintVis (see screenshot).

The tool shows how many times each formula is executed and total time in milliseconds. This provides insight about where to optimize and change complex formulas.

So – for Consultants out there or those working the Support Hotline, utilizing “Developer Trace Mode” gives powerful analysis as to what might be slowing down an estimate – a custom formula may be looping its calculations and causing a “flat tire” in performance. Developer Trace Mode helps you to pinpoint and fix such events.

If this tool shows a Consultant the obvious origin of the performance problem, he/she can then look into the existing formula and rewrite it to optimize its performance – without having to wait for a busy Developer.